


Fated

by Taste_of_Suburbia



Category: X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men (Original Timeline Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, F/M, Falling In Love, Family, Fandom Stocking 2018, Fix-It, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Getting Together, Love Confessions, Mutual Pining, Reunions, Rogue coming to terms with who she is, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-12
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-10-08 22:57:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17395301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taste_of_Suburbia/pseuds/Taste_of_Suburbia
Summary: Mutant teens like her would joke about it but the professors would get quiet every time it was mentioned, how soul mates existed and how sometimes they found each other, and Rogue wondered…





	Fated

**Author's Note:**

  * For [queenmidalah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenmidalah/gifts).



> A gift for queenmidalah’s stocking for Fandom Stocking. 
> 
> During X2, Logan realizes what’s been eating away at him and goes back to her. Soulmate AU.

 

For Rogue, everyday was just like the last since Logan had left the school behind. Had left  _her_ behind. 

She would struggle through the schoolwork for her summer classes, half-relieved she had taken them as a means of distracting herself, though mostly just wishing she could lay around and do nothing but think of Logan, mind crazily forming ideas of where he was and what he was doing and what he was thinking. And mostly whether he was thinking of  _her._

Bobby always came up with excuses to get her out of her room, simple ideas like bowling or raiding the kitchen or even just faking needing help with a math problem. Rogue went along with it all at first, let Bobby lead her into a real relationship that was the furthest thing from real given she couldn’t touch him without the thin layer of glove separating her from the rest of the world. She went along with it for Logan’s sake, for Bobby’s sake, even maybe for her own sanity, but then she just couldn’t do it anymore.

She wasn’t Marie anymore, she wasn’t that naive little girl who just wanted to make out with a boy and be like every other girl. She realized now just how foolish she had been wanting to just fool around. She had grown up a lot since then - had been  _forced_ to grow up - and now she wanted companionship and love,  _real_ love, the love where it wasn’t about making out in secret, behind closed doors with silly smiles and stupid ideas of what the future would hold. She wanted to hold hands, to  _love_ without only the lust, to be someone’s rock when they needed it and to get angry with someone but still love them anyway and grow in the process. 

Rogue wanted those things with Logan.

_Am I meant to never be loved? To fall in love but never have someone love me the way I do them? And how can I love someone if I can’t touch them, how can I love myself for inflicting this on them?_

Logan had told her before he left that it didn’t matter, that none of it did. “You don’t need to touch someone to love them. And if someone expects that from you, if someone wants you to be anything other than who you are, then they don’t deserve you and they never will. This world,” he bore into her, when it was just the two of them and Rogue’s heart beat like a thundering drum, holding onto Logan’s every word, “this world isn’t meant for us settling for second best. You’ll know what you want when the time comes and you should fight for it, but you alone need to be define what that is. These… abilities that we have, they aren’t meant to get in the way of what we are. Maybe they do sometimes, okay, a helluva lot, but they are who we are, Rogue. It sounded like a lot of horse crap to me too, when the Professor first said it, but I realize that he’s right. We’re meant to have these powers. One way or another, we have to find out how to live with them.”

_How to live with them… no matter the cost, right?_

Logan had fought against himself for so long, trying to be something other than who he is. It hurt Rogue to think about that, to know that Logan thought he had to suffer, to go it alone, that that was his destiny.

_And does he still think that? Is that why he’s gone and not here, with me?_

He wanted something different for her, didn’t want her to be alone, but didn’t he realize that that wasn’t fair? Didn’t he realize that Rogue always felt alone, without him?

She knew he would come back, maybe not for her but for some reason. And if he came back without her as the reason then it wouldn’t hurt, not really. She wasn’t that much of a child anymore.

The first second she had laid eyes on him in that bar, she felt the same pull she did now. She had chosen him above anyone else and not just because he was like her, well, not  _like_ her but someone different, someone who didn’t belong like her. Someone everyone stared at with wide, shocked, disappointed eyes. Someone everyone ran from. 

No… there was something else too.  _Someone_ else that told her:  _This is your chance. Run with it and you never have to hide or feel angry or be scared again._

So she ran, with him, and she never looked back.

Later on, when she was keeping her head down and minding her own business and when she least expected it, mutant teens like her would joke about it but the professors would get quiet every time it was mentioned, how soul mates existed and how sometimes they found each other, and Rogue  _wondered._ She wondered whether Logan was hers, despite the age difference and despite how much he knew about the world and how little she did. 

Despite that she could never touch anyone and how that would be some cruel joke for her own soul mate, never to be able to touch her.

But when they first met, Logan’s eyes resting on her without a care in the world felt like pinpricks all over her skin. The smoke from his cigar had filled up the air around them, pushing out everyone else and yanking her in, closer to him. Despite it being the ends of the earth, cold numbing her skin and uncertainty gnawing at her bones, she felt that with him she would be safe, and the second she saw his claws she vowed never to brush aside her instincts again.

Logan was gentle really, a little rough around the edges sure, that was what the world had molded him into, but he was confident and understanding and maneuvered through the world almost as if he owned it, bearing it upon his back but never breaking. He looked at her without looking through her, never pulled away in fear of what she could do to him, and didn’t treat her differently from anyone else.

But to Logan, maybe all she would ever be to him was just a kid, a kid who was right where she belonged, fitting in but never  _really_ fitting in. 

Rogue had already decided long before this that she wouldn’t hold him back. She wouldn’t be the next great weight, wouldn’t be the reason he refused to move on to someplace he belonged.

But she couldn’t let him go either, wouldn’t snap the tether than kept her tuned into him. That let her know that he was coming back.

She greeted him at the door, wanting to see him before anyone else did, and while she anticipated the smile and hand brushing her clothed arm in affection, she hadn’t expected him guiding her into an empty classroom and locking the door securely behind him.

He leaned against the door, tense all over. Rogue had so many things that she wanted to ask him, but it looked like he had more so she waited.

“Summer classes are really in full-swing, aren’t they?”

Rogue shrugged and took a seat next to the window. The sunshine felt warmer to her now that Logan had returned, resting on the back of her exposed neck instead of glowering at her. “Professor Xavier realizes not all of us have a home to go back to, so he lets us stay through the summer. The only condition is that we have to take two summer courses. I think it’s mainly to keep tabs on us though. Other than Bobby and I, there’s only about fifteen others.” Rogue hadn’t minded the quiet or the abundance of room, only the loneliness that Bobby couldn’t quite fill up.

“Bobby takes his studies pretty seriously, huh?”

Rogue shrugged. “He seems good at everything he puts his mind to. It’s like it’s effortless for him. Not all of us have it that easy.” She followed Logan’s downcast gaze, tucked her hair behind her ear and set down her books. “Advanced Mutant Anatomy. Though Professor Xavier already forewarned me that there’s no chapter on what I’ve been inflicted with.”

She regretted the words the instant they left her mouth. Logan hated her deprecating herself, scolded her every time she did it with a hard, determined look in his eyes. After her cringe, however, she realized that the only thing in Logan’s eyes at this moment was sadness and regret.

What had he done that he regretted?

“Rogue… Marie…,” he sighed. “Do you have a preference?”

“I always thought I’d never be Marie again, but I don’t mind what you choose, either way.”

Logan stared at her, probably wanting her to elaborate on that but Rogue held her tongue. “Alright then,  _Marie.”_ Her heart shone a little bit brighter, heart beating just a little crazier. “God knows I shouldn’t be bringing you into my shit, that I should just take off and tell myself I can’t ever try this again. But I know you don’t want me to leave. I can see it in your eyes every time I do, kid.” He slammed his hand down on the nearest desk and Rogue jumped, back pressing more firmly against the window. “And I shouldn’t be calling you that anymore either because you’re  _not_ . You’re fully capable of making your own decisions. Even if calling you a kid would make all of this easier, would put it all on me.”

Rogue could only stare. “Logan, what are you…?”

“Don’t.” He held up a hand and Rogue froze, trying to understand what was really happening but also not wanting to believe it in case all of this was some dream. “Just let me… just let me get all this out and then you can talk, you can talk for hours, for days and I’ll listen. I’ll listen to anything you want to say.”

“Logan,” she swallowed with difficulty. “I don’t….”

He was there then, legs brushing against her knees, warm breath just subtly shifting her hair even as his fingers pushed it out of her eyes, carefully so as not to brush against her skin, her eyes that had just gone impossibly wide.

His hand was shaking. “Tell me right damn now that I’m not taking advantage of you. Tell me right now that I can’t possibly be….”

Her heart nearly exploded out of her chest. “You’re not!” She cried, then adjusted with great effort and lowered her voice. “You never could, Logan. You’re not that kind of person. I  _know_ you. I know you and I  _love you._ ” Tears filled her eyes then as Logan slipped a glove onto one of his hands and stroked her cheek, pulling her into his arms and holding her to him so tightly, so tightly she couldn’t breathe for several long moments but she didn’t care. How could she care? 

And then she could feel dampness through her clothes, soaking into her skin despite her thinking that nothing ever could, that  _no one_ ever could. “I never thought…,” he broke off. “I’ve spent so long searching and I thought I found her once but I hadn’t. No one ever made me feel like you do, Marie. When I’m away from you I can still feel you, still hear you,” he chuckled and let her go just a little, “worrying so much about everything and nothing. It drives me crazy, how I can never get you out from under my skin. How I never  _want to_ .”

It  _was_ the pull, not some figment of her imagination but that they were meant to be, had crossed oceans of time to find each other. Just like Professor Xavier had noted it out loud once without shying away like the other professors, it was something mutants shared that humans could never have. It was something that Rogue had, something that anyone else would kill for. They could kiss and touch and laugh and  _pretend_ , but they might always live knowing there was something better for them out there, something they just had to wait for but never knowing if the waiting would lead to anything. 

Regardless of whether she could touch Logan he was  _truly and wholly_ hers. And he knew that now just as well as she. 

No one had ever mentioned that, that the two would come together on their own time, on their own terms, no pushing or agonizing required.

Rogue beamed like a thousand suns.

And yet in that very moment, she knew it was time to take the plunge.

It took everything in her to say the words she had been wanting to tell Logan,  _needing_ to tell him. “Logan, if you need to back out of this, if you change your mind, there won’t be any hard feelings. I won’t come after you, or ask you to stay, I just wanted you to know how I feel. I just wanted you to know that I love you, whether we’re fated or not, whether we’re meant to be together or not, I’m yours.”

“Why would you even say that?” Logan shot back, voice thick with emotion. “I almost lost you, Marie. I am  _never_ losing you again.” 

The silence in the room after that felt like a knife to Marie’s gut, stripping away all the parts of her that she fought tirelessly to keep up. With Bobby there had been only guilt that she hadn’t been able to give him what  _he_ needed. 

With Logan, it wasn’t just about that. She wanted to give him everything he would have with another woman and more, everything he deserved, but selfishly she finally started wanting those things too. She wanted to hold Logan and kiss him and be able to lose control. She wanted to throw herself on top of him, hungry with love and lust, and finally just  _live._

She’d never be able to do those things, but at least she could live knowing that Logan belonged with her,  _to her,_ no matter what. 

“I don’t want you any other way, Marie. Do you think that just because I have to wear these, that just because I can’t kiss you that I don’t want you with everything in me?”

And Rogue finally had to admit to herself that  _yes,_ she did know those things. Deep down, she always had. “I know, Logan,” she spoke softly, as softly as Logan was holding her now. “I know,” she breathed. 

And after that, Rogue knew nothing could ever tear them apart, not really, at least not in any of the ways that counted.

**FIN**

 


End file.
